LONG POND, Pa. — With one turn to go, it looked like Tyler Reddick had overcome every obstacle thrown in his path Saturday at the Pocono Green 250 Recycled by J.P. Mascaro & Sons.
Battle back from starting in the rear for a transmission change? Yep. He was in the top three by the end of Stage 1 on Lap 25.
Overcome a pass-through penalty on Lap 82 for an outside tire violation on pit road? Check.
Get by Stewart-Haas Racing teammates Cole Custer and Chase Briscoe on the final restart on Lap 102? Mission accomplished with a nifty slingshot-type move that seem to set the Richard Childress Racing driver for back-to-back wins following last weekend’s triumph at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
MORE: Race results | Custer cops dramatic win
But fighting a loose car on the final lap at Pocono Raceway in a NASCAR Overtime finish, Reddick shot up a bit off of Turn 3 — as a hard-charging Custer capitalized and drove by for the victory.
Which led Reddick to say he “just gave it away.”
“I just didn’t manage the last lap well,” Reddick said after finishing as the runner-up. “I made mistakes through the corner of Turn 1. Turn 2 was OK and I got really loose in Turn 3 trying to use brake to make my car turn in the last lap.”
A pit stop for left-side tires on Lap 96 set Reddick up to have a bit of advantage on Custer, Briscoe and Christopher Bell with some fresher Goodyears. And then another caution and a nifty move just after the Lap 102 restart set Reddick up for a potential victory before the final corner.
“Pretty much gave it right back to him (Custer) there,” Reddick said in a joking, yet matter-of-fact manner. “I’ve done that with Cole a few times on the last lap. One of these times I’ll quit giving it to him. It was fun to battle with him.”
The two drivers have had their share of on-track battles, most notably at Texas last fall where Custer edged out Reddick in a memorable finish.
“For how crazy our day was, all the issues we had to overcome, it says a lot about this team,” Reddick said. “We’ve been able to rebound and make things happen. … I know we wanted to win this race today and I made that mistake on the last lap. Second place isn’t a bad finish.”
The result — his ninth straight top-four finish in the series — saw Reddick extend his points lead to 76 over Bell heading into next week’s LTi Printing 250 (June 8 at 1:30 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at Michigan International Speedway.